


No Way Out

by Lilou88



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, Gen, Memory Loss, Tattoos, Trapped, Zombie Apocalypse, genre typical gore, genre typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 19:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1790959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilou88/pseuds/Lilou88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It'll be an easy run. In, out, and back."</p><p>A supply run into what's left of Kirkwall goes horribly wrong, leaving Marian and Fenris trapped in a pharmacy storeroom with a city block full of walkers between them and safety.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If those of you who are reading TCWAA and Abaddon have been wondering where I disappeared to, this fic is the culprit you've been looking for. Originally a drabble meme prompt given to me by Tumblr user hpbooklover4ever, what I had fully intended to be a manageable 1,000 to 2,000 word one-shot meant to give me a little break from my other works quickly spiraled into this 14,000+ word monster. 
> 
> Set in a modern zombie au I've had stewing in the back of my brain for well on a year now, this fic is intended to exist in the same universe/timeline, though whether or not certain factors change if I ever end up with the time to write the main story is still up in the air. This fic is completed, but I've broken it down into five chapters to make it more manageable a beast to read and will be posting them every few days or so, depending on how busy real life keeps me. 
> 
> A HUGE thank you to my beta, Tumblr user sixpennies - this story is written in a vastly different style than my others, and it was a gigantic help to have her advice and encouragement. 
> 
> Also as one last note to my readers of my other fics: I will be getting back to work on them shortly! You all know I'm a slow writer, but as I've said on multiple occasions, they will both be finished eventually, I promise! Please, PLEASE be patient with me - I have A LOT of things going on in real life atm which are putting a huge drain on any writing time I end up having during any given week, and the writing process itself is not a fast one. Especially since I want to make certain I give you all the best stories I can. 
> 
> And finally, I hope you all enjoy! Please let me know what you think! :D

It'll be an easy run. In, out, and back with enough time left before dinner to help Anders sort through whatever supplies she manages to find. They're running low on pain killers and disinfectant, and antihistamines soon enough too now that spring's finally decided to make an appearance and the annual Hawke family tradition of constant sneezing and watery eyes has started to kick in. Marian had been all too happy to offer to make the trip into Kirkwall; they've combed through the area around Sol's Pharmacy a dozen times already and haven't seen a single walker in near on a month, and if it means an afternoon free of Carver's stuffy-nosed grousing it's well worth the risk of having to deal with a stray or two.

She decides to take the new guy (Fenris, he calls himself, and how he'd ended up with a name like that she can't even start to guess) along with her on a whim and the off chance that some time away from the main group will get him to open up a little. In the three weeks since he joined up with them she hasn't heard him talk more than a handful of times. Not that he ever gives her much of an opportunity to strike up a conversation when the only time he seems to come out of that tent of his is for meals or to help with his share of the chores. Bethany thinks it's because “he's just shy, Mari” and “maybe a bit of an introvert”. Marian's money is on it being a combination of that and leftover embarrassment from stumbling his way into the center of their camp bare-assed in nothing but an open-backed hospital gown.

She grins down at the ground, tongue darting out to fiddle with the hoop piercing in the corner of her bottom lip. Now _that_ is a story she's just  dyingto hear more of. But later. She's more than half convinced that if she were to bring the subject up now he'd spin himself in the opposite direction, take off running and never look back. Better to save her curiosity for when they're on good enough terms to communicate in complete sentences. 

“Is something funny?”

The question pulls her out of her thoughts with a start. Damn, but that voice of his still catches her off guard whenever he decides to use it. He doesn't sound anything like she expects him to: deeper and richer than any lanky bastard like him should, with a rough edge that makes the skin at the back of her neck prickle. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, oh no. Far, _far_ from wrong. 

She glances up from the cracked pavement to find him watching her, his eyebrow curving high enough to disappear behind a fringe of absurdly white hair. Something else to ask him about at some point, she notes quietly to herself.

“Nothing in particular.” The fib comes easily, her smile widening as she pulls at the straps of her backpack to bring it higher between her shoulders. “Just glad to get away from camp and back into town for a while.”

The brow goes even higher, and Marian has to bite at the inside of her lip to keep from laughing at how honestly confused he seems to be at the idea. “You _enjoy_ being sent out on supply runs?”

“Love it, actually. Nothing beats pawing through broken glass and turning over bodies on the off chance they're sitting on a half-full bottle of peroxide, don't you think?”

A crease appears above his nose, the tattoos lining his chin twisting as his mouth pulls down into a frown. “You're a very strange woman, Hawke.”

Would you look at that. Not even an hour in and he's already calling her by name. Her family name, but her name none the less. It still counts as progress.

“Eh, maybe a little. But you're not really one to talk, are you Fen? Can I call you Fen? I'm going to call you Fen,” she says as she picks absently at the bandana around her neck, not bothering to give him the chance to protest at the nickname. “Mysterious stranger comes bumbling out of the woods looking like he's gotten himself ten different types of lost on the way to a comic book convention? I think that scores a bit higher on the oddity meter than enjoying a nice apocalyptic treasure hunt.”

That earns her a fully-fledged scowl which no doubt would have had her cringing if it weren't for the pink tinge she spots creeping its way up the sides of his neck and along his ears. Instead she only shrugs, disappointed but unsurprised when he turns his attention back to the road, muttering something unintelligible beneath his breath.

The last leg of the trip passes in silence, Marian making every effort to distract herself from the increasingly awkward quiet by running her hand along her belt to check and re-check her gear. Hatchet on her left hip, the nine millimeter and radio Aveline had loaned her clipped into the waistband of her jeans at her back with the safety on. As many bullets as they could spare stuffed in her pockets and a bare essentials first aid kit in the bottom of her pack. Between that, Fen's machete, and the shotgun strapped across his back, it _should_ be more than enough to get them through the afternoon, but if she's learned anything since being tossed on her ass into a living hell it's that you hope for the best and make damn sure you're ready for the worst.

By the time she finishes her fourth pass the street has narrowed enough to make it impossible to walk without stepping into grabbing distance of cars and other hiding spots. They stop for a moment just outside the first shattered storefront, Fen moving the duffle bag over his shoulder out of the way to pull his gun free as Marian turns the radio on, white noise and static crackling while she tunes in to the camp's frequency.

“Um, this is Marian. To base camp. Marian to base camp,” she says haltingly. Jesus, she hates using this thing. “Is, ah, anyone there? Aveline? We're just about to cross into the, er...” Oh, what was it they decided to call it? “Hot zone? Dead zone? Whatever it is we're there.”

She waits, counts to ten, but doesn't get an answer. “Hello? Anyone? This is Marian, checking in. We're about to hit Sol's, can you hear me?”

“—ve to take your finger off the button, Sweet Thing,” a new voice which is most definitely not the police chief's purrs back when her thumb slips from the transmitter. “Can't get through if you're holding the channel.”

“Oh, shit! Sorry, 'Bela!” she says with a grimace. There's a soft huff of a laugh, and she looks up in time to see Fen turn his attention back to the half-loaded cartridge against his thumb, a smirk curling the corner of his mouth. Well, at least now she knows he has some form of a sense of humor, even if it's at her expense. “We're, er, almost at Sol's now. If you, you know, didn't hear me the first time.”

Isabela laughs over the other end, the sound of a booted foot knocking against wood coming with it. “Oh we heard you alright. What do you say, check-in in an hour and a half?”

“Better make it a bit longer. We picked the place pretty much clean last time. Might finally have to break into the storeroom if we're going to bring back anything more than toothpaste and SpongeBob Band-Aids.”

“Right. Make it two hours then. Oh, and Varric wanted me to ask you to keep an eye out for some of those cleaning wipes for his glasses, he's almost run out apparently.”

“Cleaning wipes, got it,” she says with a quick nod. “We'll hear from you in two. Marian out.”

“Good luck. And make sure Broody comes back in one piece, yeah? He's got the best ass out of the whole group – hate to lose the eye candy so soon.”

“ _Goodbye_ , 'Bela,” she says over the sound of Fen groaning, a muffled “byyye!” coming in as she tucks the radio back into place at the small of her back and takes hold of the pistol in its place. “What do you say?” she asks as she slides the clip free to make sure it's fully loaded before locking it back into place with a quiet _click_. “Ready to get started?”

“As I'll ever be,”  Fen says, sour-faced from Isabela's goading, his shotgun held out and ready in both hands. 

The pharmacy is a block's walk away through streets cramped with rubbish and even more dead cars, some empty, some with what's left of their unfortunate occupants still strapped down inside. Thankfully the dead stay dead today, the corpses Marian does her best to ignore still and free of any signs of light in their eyes or buried in their skin that would mark a walker for what it is. The farther along the street they travel the more dilapidated the businesses lining either side of it become, most all of their windows already shattered – some by looters during the first few nights of the outbreak, others later on by surviving scavengers like them. 

Sol's hasn't held up much better than the rest, the metal frame of its glass doors bent and crunched in on themselves with only a few shards left clinging around their edges. Its sign hangs off-kilter from its rod, one of the chains holding it in place snapped free to leave it swinging in the breeze. Inside is just as bad, aisle after aisle of over the counter medicines torn apart or knocked end over end, the floor covered in a layer of spilled ointments and loose pills that crunch under her sneakers.

“Find whatever you can out here,” she says, bending down to start searching through the mess for any salvageable supplies. She makes a short gesture towards the somehow still-intact door of the pharmacy's stockroom with her chin as she picks up, frowns at and tosses aside a cracked package of vitamins. “We'll hit that room last if we need to.”

Fen gives an agreeing grunt and turns towards the toiletries section, gun shifted to his left hand while he starts to toss what few bars of soap, deodorant and bottles of shampoo are left into his bag. Barely an hour later they've picked the place clean twice over, anything left either beyond salvaging or too cumbersome to be bothered with.

“Damn.” She frowns as she peers into her bag, the few bottles and boxes she's managed to find barely enough to cover the bottom of her pack. “Looks like we might need to track down a new cache sooner than we though.”

He tosses a disbelieving glance her way as he stuffs quite possibly the last roll of toilet paper in all of Kirkwall into his duffle bag. “You don't know that. We haven't even seen what's in the storeroom yet.”

“No,” she agrees as she starts to head for the room in question, slinging her backpack back between her shoulders before pulling her hatchet free of its holster, “but  _you_ haven't seen how quickly my family can go through a box of Benadryl.” She steps to the door and gives it a testing push, unsurprised when it turns out to be locked. “Mind giving me a hand with this?”

Fen , his machete now freed and held ready in his hand, gives a short nod,  Marian moving out of his way as he comes to stand in her place. “I'll go left,” he says plainly with a quick glance in her direction. “You take the right.”

“Got it.”

She shifts to stand just behind him and to his right, her fingers tightening around the grip of her hatchet while he leans his weight back on one leg. He lifts the other into the air and kicks out, grunting with the effort as his foot collides full-force with the door just to the side of its handle. There's a loud metallic  _crack –_ the deadbolt ripped nearly out of the wall while the door swings into the room, bouncing back several inches after slamming into the opposite wall. It's shoved out of the way again and falls back into place behind them as they both rush into the room, skirting around its edges with their weapons raised in front of them. It's smaller than  Marian expected, five rows of shelves about eight feet long taking up the space in its center and the back wall lined with unpacked boxes of paper goods and hair products, but at least it's fully stocked. They clear the space in less than a minute, meeting up in the middle of the center aisle without a single walker to be found. 

“That was almost too easy,” she says with a quick grin, her back straightening and shoulders relaxing. “Can't believe no one else has touched all this.”

Fen makes a noncommittal humming noise in the base of his throat, wasting no time in turning towards the shelves to toss more supplies into his bag. “It's not surprising. Officer Vallen said this part of town was one of the first to be overrun, didn't she? I doubt people had enough time to bother with it  – just grabbed whatever they could from the front and ran.”

“Huh. Yeah, maybe,” she says as she moves to do the same, slipping her arm behind a row of generic decongestants and sweeping them all into her pack.

A half hour of picking over their spoils later, they've found everything they needed, Varric's cleaning wipes included. Bags zipped and shifted out of their way, she takes the radio off of her belt to radio Isabela that they'd finished sooner than they'd expected, when someone –  _something –_ gives a low, guttural moan just outside the door of the storeroom. 

For a moment  Marian 's heart stops dead. Then it slams itself against her ribs like a hammer, pulse kicking into high gear while a spike of cold drags itself down the length of her spine. Her head snaps up towards  Fen , no doubt looking the perfect picture of a deer in headlights if her eyes have gone as wide as they feel, only to find he's done the same thing. 

Without missing a beat he brings a tattooed finger against his lips in a motion for quiet that is so far from necessary she might have even laughed if her throat didn't feel like it was coated in sandpaper. Instead she purses her lips and nods, holding her breath as she watches him slink his way towards the door. Pressing himself flat against the wall beside it, he slips the same finger into the gap between the damaged latch and the casing, pulling it open far enough to peer through.

He mutters something most definitely not in English, but if the way his shoulders tense up or his eyes narrow is any hint, she can tell she won't like whatever news he has for her. “Four of them,” he says almost too quietly to hear while he slips his hand free of the door. “Two near the cash registers, one by the door to the restroom and another just outside on the sidewalk.”

“Shit,” she whispers while her heart gives another painful lurch. Then again, harder and hissing past her teeth. “ _Shit_ . Where the  _hell_ did they come from so damned fast?”

“Does that really matter right now?” he asks sharply as he turns back to face her. “Don't you think we should be more concerned with how to get ourselves past them?”

She gives herself a mental shake, pushing back against the anxiety that's started churning in her stomach and making her feel as though she might be sick. _Right_. Priority number one – get your ass off the boat before you start trying to figure out why it's sinking.

Her brow furrows, tongue prodding at her piercing while she tries to think of an alternate exit, but a quick glance around the room leaves her frustratingly empty handed. The only other possibility is a set of hopper windows set up along the edge of the ceiling nearly eight feet off the floor, too narrow for either of them to have any chance of fitting through – let alone their overstuffed bags – even if they could find a way to reach them. No, if they're getting out (and they are most definitely getting out, the irony of dying in a pharmacy is just too insulting to even think of) it's going to have to be through this door, walkers be damned.

She pulls in a deep breath, eyes closing while she holds it until the count of ten before letting it out slowly through her nose. “Ok,” she says while her eyes flick open and back to  Fen , far from thrilled with their predicament but at least marginally more calm. “Besides the ones inside and outside the door, did you spot any others in the street?”

“Not that I could see,” he says with a shake of his head. “But—”

“But with our luck there'll be twice as many milling around,”  Marian interrupts with a sigh as she reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose. 

“Exactly.”

“Welp. What do you say,  Fen ?” she asks as he hand falls away, a grin she doesn't doubt looks more like a grimace spreading across her mouth. “Think we can sneak past these bastards and run the walker gauntlet without having our asses turned into chew toys?”

That actually earns her a short huff of a laugh from him, and while it's far from enough to make her feel completely at ease with what they're about to do, it doesn't hurt, either. “Do we have any other choice?”

“That's the spirit.” She smiles as she clips Aveline's radio into place on her belt, her hatchet back in her hand by the time she's crossed the room to stand next to him. “Tell you what – we make it through this mess and the next round of drinks comes out of my rations.”

He chuckles again, this time pairing it with half of a smile which for some reason makes  Marian 's poor overworked heart do an awkward sort of stuttered jump. “I'll be holding you to that, Hawke,” he says without looking to her, his machete held ready in his left hand while he slips his right behind the door to peer out into the room again, then continues, his voice lowered: “They're far enough away for a clear shot to the door. We might be able to make it out without them noticing if we move now and stay quiet.”

“What are we waiting for, then? Let's  _go_ .”

 


	2. Chapter 2

The door opens slowly and (thankfully) silently, until there's enough space for the both of them to slip out of the stockroom and into the main store. Fen takes the lead through the center of the room and Marian follows behind in his footsteps as quietly as she can, focus jumping back and forth between the walkers at either of their sides fast enough that she'd be worried about giving herself whiplash in any other situation.

One of them by the cash registers – what  _used_ to be a middle-aged man – opens its mouth and drags out a rasping breath. Its eyes are dead and dull around the edges, but in their center where the dark circles of its pupils should be there's a white-blue light, the same disturbing glow that cracks across its skin like scars. The light is muted but still bright enough to show through layers of tattered clothes, and  Marian feels a shiver rush through her at the sight of it, goose bumps cropping up along her arms. More than a year since the first outbreak and they still manage to scare her shitless. They don't even look human anymore, more like some fucked up version of Frankenstein's monster gone horribly, horribly wrong. Hell, for all she or anyone else seems to know, that very well could be  _exactly_ what they are. 

Regardless of what the walkers are or aren't, they don't seem to take any notice of them as they pick their way slowly towards the exit, their heads turned down towards the ground while they shuffle amongst themselves. Fifteen feet, ten feet, five feet from the door, and none of them have even given so much of a twitch in their direction. By the time  Fen steps over the glass still clinging to its frame, a manic little grin has started to pull at the corners of her mouth. Good to see that stroke of luck she'd been hoping for has finally decided to make an appeara —

A muffled groan and a quick flash of movement out of the corner of her eye is the only warning she gets. The overturned display of “Get Well Soon” cards at her right jerks, and she jumps near out of her skin, her mouth snapping shut instinctively on the shout she almost doesn't catch in time. She's quick, but not quick enough, and before she's able to get herself out of reach a mottled hand has shoved itself out from beneath the cardboard shelves and locked around her ankle. The walker's arm and head are there in the next second, mouth lolling open as it pushes itself forward on legs little more than mangled stumps. She feels her heart lodge itself high in her throat, eyes going wide as the card display is knocked to the side by its other arm, the cracks of blue in its skin and eyes flaring impossibly bright, like magnesium that had been set on fire.

“ _HAWKE!_ ”

Fen 's shout snaps her out of her stupor, her eyes clearing enough for her to see that second hand coming dangerously close to her knee while the walker starts to pull itself closer with the first, leaving a smeared trail of black blood and gore behind it. Stomach flipping upside down and turning hard as rock, her hand shoots to her hatchet as she watches the walker's jaw fall open, a mouthful of broken teeth inches away from the meat of her calf.

The hand ax comes free and swinging, and at the last second  Marian closes her eyes and turns away, an arm shooting up to protect her face from anything sent flying when the blade buries itself in the walker's forehead. There's a strangled grunt, the sound of a head falling hard against the floor, and then the grip around her ankle loosens, breaking when she pulls her foot away with a firm jerk. Behind her she hears  Fen stumbling through the doorway and yanks her hatchet free before turning to meet him, her arm falling away from her face.

“Are you alright?” he asks, barking the question while he looks her up and down. His machete is still up in front of him, and his face as close to white as she imagines his darker complexion can manage. “Did it – are you — ” he makes a rough gesture down towards her legs with his free hand, and she swears she see him go even paler. “Have you been  _bitten_ ?”

She shakes her head and feels the world spin around its edges, adrenaline still pumping hard in her veins and making her jittery. “No. No, I'm ok. Promise. See,” She picks her legs up one after the other, and while there's now a nasty smelling stain on her jeans from where the walker had grabbed her, there's no sign of fresh blood or torn denim. “Nothing.”

The worry lining  Fen 's face shifts into something better resembling irritation. His  brow s draw down into angry slashes, and for a moment she feels the unavoidable sense of dread of a child about to be scolded by their parent, complete with the urge to duck her head and scuff the toe of her shoe against the floor. 

His mouth purses, but whatever it is he's about to say is cut off by another moan. Both of their eyes snap up,  Fen 's narrowing while she turns to look back over her shoulder at the other walkers still inside the store. Oblivious as they had been at the start, her run-in with their crippled friend apparently hadn't been as quiet as she hoped; arms raised and mouths open the lot of them have started making their way towards them, the light in their eyes and along their skin growing brighter with each shuffled step. 

He throws out another curse beneath his breath, hand snapping to the stock of his shotgun while he shoves his machete back into its sheath. By the time  Marian turns back to meet his eyes, the hard glint has come back to them in full force. 

“Right,” she says, reading his expression easily, hatchet already switched to her opposite hand while she pulls her pistol free with her right. “Get the hell out of Dodge first, lecture about common sense and watching where I walk later.”

Shotgun now out and held between his hands,  Fen nods. He's already starting to step backwards towards the door, the heel of his boot crunching down on broken glass. “Quietly as possible – we don't know how many of them are still out — ”

“ _ FEN _ _, BEHIND YOU!_ ”

For the span of an instant time comes to a near stand-still, the image of the walker – the  _damned walker_ he'd warned her about out on the sidewalk – coming up behind  Fen 's back with its eyes and skin on fire burning into the backs of her eyes. Then it lurches, kicks into high gear and fast-forwards like one of the old VHS tapes she and Bethy used to watch together in their grandparents' basement. She throws her hand out without thinking, fingers brushing against the buttons of his thermal when she tries to fist her hand in his collar to pull him away – but she isn't fast enough. Instead she watches, horror struck, as the thing's hands close around his shoulders, his eyes going wide while he's pulled backwards off his feet. 

One of his arms fly out to clutch uselessly for the door. It's a last attempt to keep himself from being yanked out onto the street that only ends with him making a choked, pained noise, the shard of glass the top of his arm catches on ripped out of its frame and landing on the tiled floor, blood glinting along its edges.

A voice in the back of  Marian 's head yells at her to  _move, damn it!_ and she pushes herself forward, unable to see but hearing when he hits the pavement. The back of his head snaps into the ground with a  _crack_ loud enough to make her flinch, another groan tearing out of his mouth at the same time something metal skitters against the concrete; his gun falling from of his hand and out of reach. Her breath comes hard and fast, pulse pounding in her ears and feet feeling like they're weighted down with lead for all the good they're doing her – since when did running a fucking  _yard_ take so damned long? 

Finally she makes it to the door, launching herself through it and nearly tripping over her own feet when she lands. Her pistol snaps up with her head, chest heaving and pieces of her hair catching in the corner of her mouth, and what she finds is nearly enough to make her freeze in her tracks. In the time it took her to get outside the walker has managed to pull him away from the door and out towards the road, already dropped down onto its knees over him.  Fen is sprawled out awkwardly on top of his duffle bag, the fist of his uninjured arm wrapped around the thing's throat. His neck cords, struggling to hold it back while it tries to angle itself to bite at his wrist, its jaw snapping in his hand. Strong as he might be the walker's thrashing makes his hold hard to keep and  Marian watches as his elbow starts to bend, knotted fingers coming close enough to start clawing at his chest.

_BANG._

The bullet slams into its shoulder, the pistol recoiling in her hand before she fully realizes she's pulled the trigger. The walker shifts backwards from the force, head flying back and away from  Fen . Her mouth thins, eyes narrowing as she lines up another shot without hesitating, because  _fuck_ whatever else might hear it. 

_BANG._

The thing jerks to the side at the last second and she misses, her shot pinging off the hood of a rusted out police cruiser behind it. Oh well. Too late for subtlety now anyway. 

_BANG BANG._

One hits just below what's left of its nose, the other so perfectly centered between its  brow s she knows Varric would have thrown some smart ass comment her way if he'd been here to see it. 

The walker jerks, then slumps forward, eyes wide and dimming.  Fen throws it off and to the side with a groan, wincing when he brings his injured arm up to cradle it against his chest. In the next second she's at his side with her hatchet stuffed back into its holster,  Fen glancing up at her from beneath dark lashes as she drops down next to him.

“What happened,” he asks, grunting when she bends down to drag his good arm up and over her shoulder, “to 'quietly as possible'?”

She snorts, heart still pounding while her free hand clutches at his side and she shifts her feet beneath herself. “Extenuating circumstances. Don't tell me you're actually mad that I just pulled you off the dinner menu?”

He chuckles, but the sound is cut short, his eyes screwing shut as he sucks in a sharp hiss of a breath when she drags the both of them to their feet without bothering with a warning. It takes him a minute to right himself, his hand hard on her shoulder while he sways in place, most likely dizzy from the hit he took to the back of his head. His eyes open once he's steady, only to have his expression grow stony as they flick a quick glance through the rest of the street.

“I think it's a bit early to say that much.”

Marian cocks a  brow at him, but when he doesn't move to return the look she follows his gaze out towards the road as well. A second later and her goose bumps return in full force, the fear that had just started to ebb away plowing back into her like an eighteen wheeler with no brakes. 

“Shit.”

There are walkers  _everywhere_ . Between cars, stumbling out of the alleys, even dragging themselves out from beneath the bench at a bus stop across the street, for Christ's sake. She knows without trying she'd never be able to count how many there are even if she'd cared to. But if anything is coming out loud and clear through the panic she can feel building where the bottom of her stomach has dropped away, it's that there's no way in hell they have enough bullets between them to stand their ground. Her head snaps back to look down the street they'd come up, hoping it's at least clear enough to pass...

“ _Shit!_ ” 

No such luck. They're completely surrounded, the circle of clear space around them shrinking by the second. Her head reels, mind racing while her eyes flit back and forth through the crowd of undead, but despite her search and a silent prayer to any divine powers who may be listening in, no opening or miracle presents itself. Desperate, she looks back towards the pharmacy, the three walkers they'd left inside now nearly to the window.

“ Fen ,” she says without looking away from them while she tries to squash the voice in her head screaming about how this has ‘bad idea’ written all over it, “Can you reach your gun?”

He straightens, pulls his arm off her shoulder and she hears the bottom of his boots scrap against the sidewalk before he rushes off without a word. He's back at her side in seconds, and doesn't bother to ask for an explanation when she snatches the shotgun out of his hand and shoves the nine millimeter into his chest.

“Keep them back.” She pumps the gun once, a cartridge sliding into place. “Once the path is clear, we make for the stockroom like there's a dragon breathing fire up our asses. Got it?”

She hears the hammer of the pistol click into place. “There's no need for motivators, Hawke,” he says, the words coming out level but tight.

“Ok,” She cradles the butt of the gun into her shoulder, wincing in anticipation of the kickback. “Here's hoping this works...”

_BLAM._

The shotgun explodes in her hands, ramming back into her hard enough to make pins and needles shoot out from her collarbone and down her bicep. The pellets shred through the center of the middle walker's sternum and she catches a glimpse of the pulpy mess she's made out of its chest before it collapses onto the pharmacy floor, still sputtering but incapacitated enough. Another spike of adrenaline rushes through her, the same manic smile coming back in full force at the realization that this just might not end as terribly as she though.

“God bless whoever invented buckshot!” she yells out while the spent cartridge goes flying, the laugh that follows sounding a little deranged if she's honest with herself.

Fen replies with a round of three shots from the pistol, the metallic smell of gun smoke thick enough now to bite at the inside of her nose. “Speed would be appreciated, Hawke!” He growls over his shoulder to her before firing another round. “I only have so many bullets!”

_BLAM_ . 

“Spoilsport!” 

_BLAM._

The walkers left at either side of the door fall one after the other, one making a wet gurgling noise as it collapses with a hole in the center of its chest while the other's head is blown clean off its shoulders, black blood and pieces of bone splattering on the display stand behind it. Arm now completely numb,  Marian swings her hand back to grab at  Fen 's shoulder, fingers twisting into his sleeve.

“All clear!” she shouts as she whips him around and pushes him back towards the pharmacy, shoving hard enough to nearly make him stumble. “Now  _move_ !”

He's at the entrance in seconds, jumping over the door frame at a run with his injured arm pressed close to his chest, grunting when his feet hit the floor. The walker with the mangled chest throws an arm out from where it twitches on its back, close enough to try to grab for his ankle.

_BANG._

Marian reaches the door herself in time to watch the thing's arm fall limp on the floor, the light in its eyes and skin going dim while smoke floats out of the bullet hole  Fen 's shot has left in the middle of its forehead. In the next breath she's throwing herself into the store, landing on one foot in a puddle of blood from the now-headless walker. 

“AH!”

The rubber of her sneaker slips in the mess, her foot skidding along the tile as it shoots out awkwardly to one side. The whole of her top half lurches, arms sent swinging to steady herself while her other foot comes down hard enough to send a flash of pain lancing up her calf. She feels something shift and fall away from her back as she jerks herself upright, and its only after she's steadied herself and thrown her hand back to check that she realizes Aveline's radio is gone. A fresh wave of panic drops over her like a bucket of ice water and she spins in place, aware of but ignoring the way her leg screams in protest from the sudden movement.

“ _Shit shit shit_ ,” she hisses when a quick glance does nothing to help her pin-point where the radio fell. Not by the door, not near any of the downed walkers, not under any of the shelves that she can see- “ _Shit shit shit DAMN it!_ ”

“Hawke!”

Marian looks up at  Fen 's shout, whatever color was left in her face draining away when she ends up staring out into the street. The first of the horde outside has made it across the road and onto the sidewalk, the closest no more than ten feet away. 

Something hard closes around the strap of her backpack and for a moment she thinks she's forgotten about another damned walker, but when her head snaps back around she's met only with a very green, very  _angry_ glare. 

“God  _damn it_ , Hawke,”  Fen grinds out past clenched teeth, the pistol digging into her shoulder as he tightens his grip, “come on!”

“ _Fuck!_ ” 

He's already dragged her through most of the distance separating them from the stockroom by the time her feet can catch up. There's a crash behind them, glass cracking under multiple pairs of feet, and somewhere in the back of her head she takes note that whatever chance she'd had of finding the radio is now officially lost.  Fen drops his hold of her to push the door out of their way with his good arm, turning as soon as they both make it inside to hold it shut with his shoulders. At the same time  Marian shucks her pack and the shotgun off into some corner, spinning around in the next second to take hold of the closest set of shelves. Muscles protest from the effort as she hauls it towards the door, its metal shrieking against tiles while boxes of meds fall and break open on the floor, pill bottles sent scattering in every direction.  Fen waits until she has it nearly in place before jumping out of the way of the impromptu brace, wasting no time in throwing his weight behind the next one and the next as well, until they've placed four sets of storage shelves between them and the walkers outside, sealing themselves in. 

With no other way out.

_Fuck._

 


	3. Chapter 3

“Do you think...” Marian pants, bending down to brace herself against her knees, pulse running like a spooked horse and breath coming in short, painful gasps, “do you think that will hold them?”

Something – a walker's fist, hell, maybe a whole walker for all of how loud the sound is – pounds into the door. She jumps at the noise, nearly toppling backwards over a package of pain killers, but while the shelves shake from the impact they stay firmly in place.

“I think that's as good of an answer as we'll get for the time being,” Fen says, breathing heavily as well, sweat making his bangs stick to the front of his forehead.

“Ok.” She takes a handful of short, unsteady steps backwards, until her back bumps into the end of another self and she leans herself back into it. Her head tilts back, brows furrowing while she tries to calm down, taking deep, slow breaths in and out through her nose. “Ok.”

Of all the ways she could have seen this run going, winding up trapped in an oversized closet with nothing but a broken door and a few flimsy shelves between them and a store filled with undead was not a blunder she had made a contingency plan for. For a second she wishes she'd thought to put together more of her Molotovs before setting out – but really, what good would they do them now? Maybe if she'd had them out in the street she could have bought them some time or used them to clear a path, but at this point the only good they'd do is kill the both of them off from smoke inhalation before the walkers manage to get their hands on them.

Another spike of cold dread races down her spine at the thought, her brain betraying her as it puts together some very unpleasant, very  _vivid_ images of just what either of those outcomes would entail. Her chest tightens as they flash past, panic building in her chest and threatening to rise up and swallow her whole for how hopeless the situation seems – but she forces it back down, eyes screwing shut with the effort. Going to pieces has never helped before, and it certainly won't help now. She needs a clear head if they're going to make it through this; decisions made out of fear are just as likely to kill them off as the walkers at the door if she isn't careful.

It takes a minute that feels more like an hour, but eventually she feels her heartbeat start to slow down to something sharing a close enough resemblance with normal. This isn't good, but it isn't  _terrible_ either. Not yet, anyway. They're both alive and, more importantly, not bitten, and their barricade seems to be holding up alright despite what sounds like the walkers' best efforts.  Fen 's arm is fucked, but not catastrophically so, and between the first aid kit in her backpack and the supplies in the room they have everything they need to at least make sure he doesn't keel over from infection anytime soon. 

Of course, looking on the bright side of the situation will do all of nothing to help with the fact that they are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, trapped like a pair of overly intelligent rats.

It doesn't take long for her to realize  Fen has come to the same conclusion as well, the barest hint of what she thinks is worry, but could very well be aggravation, appearing in his face when he says: “We're safe in here for the time being, I think. But we need to hail the others on the radio. They'll be able to get a better idea of what the situation looks like then we will in here, maybe even set up some kind of a distraction.”

“Right. The radio. Er, about that,” she says sheepishly, already cringing. “I... Well. I may have... lost it?”

“You  _what?_ ”

“Lost it,” she repeats herself, though if the way  Fen is glaring at her is any clue she doubts the clarification is necessary for anything other than stalling his attempts to strangle her. “It fell off my belt when we made it back into the store. You didn't think I was sitting up there looking for loose change, did you?” 

He looks as though he's caught between utter disbelief and wanting to punch something – possibly her. There's a long moment where he does nothing but gape at her, nose flared and the fist of his good arm clenched around where he's holding the injured one against his chest, skin and fabric now thoroughly stained with his own blood. Then his chin drops and he scowls down into the floor, white hair falling in his face while he bites out another indistinguishable but thoroughly violent-sounding curse.

“ _Damn it_ , Hawke,” he growls, his eyes narrowed and cutting back up towards her. “ _Fuck_ .”

“My thoughts exactly.”

His hand pulls away from his arm and makes to run through his hair, only to be pulled back when it reaches eye level and he spots the mess coating his fingers. Instead he spins on his heel and starts to pace, storming back and forth across the cleared space left by the shelves, the toe of his boot sending several of the spilled meds rolling across the floor.

“Ok, look, I know this seems bad,”  Marian says, her hands raising half in a placating gesture, half out of impulse when he goes after a bottle of cough syrup with a little more force than is necessary and sends it flying within a foot of her face. “Really,  _really_ bad even — ”

He snorts. “You don't say?”

“—but honestly I don't think it is.” And then, when his brows raise and he looks at her like she's grown a second head, she adds: “ _As_ bad, I mean. It's still pretty terrible.”

“You do know you're horrible at offering reassurances, I assume?”

“Everyone already knows we're out here,” she says evenly, choosing to ignore his jab for the moment. “We were supposed to check in with them... hell, by now, probably. When we don't try to reach them they'll try themselves and when that doesn't work they'll know something went wrong and come looking for us. It's the whole reason we use the stupid things in the first place.”

_That_ makes him pause, and he turns to look at her with one foot raised mid-step. “That's... something, I suppose.”

She nods. “Better than resigning ourselves to living out our last days on Flintstone vitamins and Metamucil mix if you ask me.”

“And what do we do in the mean time?” he asks, brow cocking as he turns to face her. “Just... wait?”

“It isn't like we have much else in the way of options, is it? I'm sure we'll come up with something to pass the time.” Her eyes fall to the gash in his arm, lips twisting to see the bloodstain has spread even further just in the past few minutes. “We could make sure you don't bleed out any time soon, for starters.”

His free hand shifts automatically over the wound – a poor attempt to conceal the evidence if she's ever seen one, the grimace that flicks across his face even more of a dead giveaway towards his discomfort than the blood. “That isn't necessary.”

She snorts, crossing the space between them in a few short strides. “Don't be ridiculous,” she says, eyes rolling as she reaches out to take a careful hold of his arm. “There's no point in you risking an infection when we're in a damned drug store of all places. It isn't like we're hurting for supplies to take care of it.”

Her fingers give a gentle tug, and after a long second of sour-faced hesitation he gives in, reluctantly letting her pull the limb off of and away from his chest. The sleeve of his thermal is a wreck, tattered edges starting to crust and stick to his skin. Between the mess of blood and fabric she can't see much of the cut, so she takes the cuff carefully in hand, making sure to move slowly as she rolls it up to his elbow.  Fen hisses a little when the pieces that had stuck to the wound are pulled free, but otherwise he doesn't protest and  Marian finds herself thankful that he has enough sense not to fight with her over this. 

Finally the sleeve is tucked up and out of the way and she glances back at the gash, breathing out a sigh of relief when she sees it isn't nearly as bad as she had thought it would be. Running almost perfectly parallel with one of the thicker lines of his tattoos, the cut sits a little more than two fingers' width below his wrist. It's about as long as she had expected, between two and three inches if she had to guess, but it's not nearly as deep as she'd worried.

“Looks like today's your lucky day,” she says happily, offering him a bright smile without letting go of his arm. “Much deeper than this and we'd be finding out just how good my sewing skills are. But I think cleaning it and wrapping it up should be enough for now. At least until we get ourselves out of here and Anders can take a look at you.”

She feels him freeze up at that, the tension creeping into his voice when he asks: “You'd honestly have tried to give me stitches?”

“'Course I would have,” she says absently as she turns his arm to get a closer look at the damage. “You know, if you had needed them.”

“Do you even know  _how_ ?”

“I've a vague idea. I've seen Bethany practice them loads of times, it's pretty straight forward.”

“Your sister is a vet tech, Hawke.”

Marian brushes the statement off with a wave of her hand as she turns and crosses the room to collect her backpack from the corner. “Semantics. We're all animals, you know. And you don't need them anyway, so no worries there.”

She hears  Fen make a short, snorting sound behind her. “Small mercies, I suppose.” 

“Watch it, you,” she says over her shoulder while she settles herself on a pile of boxes of paper towels stacked along the wall, the warning losing most of its threat when she follows it with a grin. “You're stuck in here with me until the reinforcements come, remember?”

_If they come,_ a voice in the back of her head whispers, and her smile falters. A second later and she's thrown herself into tearing through her pack, mouth pursing as she paws through the hodge-podge of meds and toiletries she'd collected earlier, doing her best to ignore the way her stomach had seized up at the thought. 

She pats the empty space on top of the box next to her, not bothering to look up from her things while she finagles a bottle of hand sanitizer and peroxide out of the pack one handed. “Come on, no sense putting it off.”

He doesn't join her immediately, lingering by the door long enough for her to set her things down on the floor and dive back in for the first aid kit buried at the very bottom. He's there by the time she manages to pull it free though, settling himself on the very edge of the box and tapping out an uneven rhythm against his leg with his fingers.  Marian notices it after pulling the kit free and setting at her other side, glancing up to find  Fen staring into the opposite wall as though he's trying to bore holes into it with his eyes.

“Er... is everything alright?”

The question seems to snap him out of wherever his thoughts had gone, head turning towards her enough for his eyes to flick over her face. “Yes, I...” he says, words coming out a bit uneven while the fidgeting hand falls back to rub itself along the length of his thigh. It comes to a stop and closes around his knee at the same time he tilts his head down to clear his throat, still looking a bit uneasy by the time he glances back to her. “Apologies. I'm fine, I just—”

“I mean, I won't lie, cleaning it out is probably going to hurt,” she says, interrupting him with a shrug and a guess at what has him so suddenly anxious. “But it's better than letting it spread and give you a fever, and a  _hell_ of a lot better than washing it with something else. Had to use whiskey on Carver once, back around when all this first happened. Jesus, you should have seen the faces he pulled.” 

“What?” he asks, blinking, before his expression shifts, glowering at her like she's just thrown him some heinous insult against his mother. “I'm not — _frightened,_ Hawke.” 

“Well you could have fooled me,” she says matter-of-factly as she starts to unbutton the cuffs of her sleeves and pull them back towards her elbows, “You look more like someone who's about to be dragged to the electric chair, not have his arm patched up.”

“ _I'm_ _not_ .”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” she says, eyes rolling while she squirts a generous amount of hand sanitizer into her palm and rubs it between her fingers. “Wouldn't want to hurt your manly pride or anything.”

His mouth opens only to be left hanging, and she's almost certain she can hear the cogs turning in his head while he no doubt tries to decide if it's worth his time to argue the point further. It apparently isn't, because a few seconds later he's snapped his mouth shut again, jaw going tight as he shoves his injured arm out over her lap.

“Just— get it over with, would you?” he grumbles, turning his head to glare off into the opposite corner of the room with a huff.

The cap of the bottle of peroxide cracks open with a twist of her wrist and she snorts. “Jesus, you're even worse than Carver was,” she mutters to herself as she pulls the plastic seal off of the mouth of the bottle. She shifts in her seat, too busy with positioning herself and his arm the way she wants it to notice that  Fen has screwed his eyes shut or how his free hand has balled itself into a fist against his leg. “On three, ok? One... two... three.”

His arm nearly jerks out of her grip, and she hears him make a strangled noise in his throat, the sound caught midway between a growl and a whine. White foam fizzes and spreads across the whole of his forearm, the excess running in little rivulets across the top of his hand and down into the bend of his elbow, and  she has to do a double take. 

What in the hell...? 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Marian closes her eyes, gives her head a little shake and then opens them again to stare down at Fen's arm, breathing out a little relieved sigh when she sees that it still looks to be a perfectly normal, if damp, limb. For a second she had thought she'd seen... but no. No that would be ridiculous, even for this circus sideshow of a reality. She bites down gently on her lower lip, piercing catching between her teeth while she brushes her thumb against one of the swirls of his tattoos. The white ink is brilliant, but flat, and most definitely _not_ glowing like she could have sworn it had just seconds ago. Not that she'd expected them to. It had just been a trick of the light against the peroxide. Or her mind, maybe. She'd be lying to herself if she said the walkers outside didn't have her on edge, after all. Right, that was probably it. Just her head trying to scare the crap out of her by making her think his tattoos had lit up with the same creepy light as their markings. The traitor.

She pushes any other thoughts of the hallucination away, attention turned back to the now-clean gash on Fen's arm. “See?” she says happily while she reaches blindly towards the first aid kit at her right, fingers poking at the supplies until they close around a thick, fluffy roll of gauze. “That wasn't so God-awful now, was it?”

He grumbles as he turns back, but when he speaks she doesn't miss the way some of his earlier tension has ebbed away. “I've certainly lived through worse.” His eyes flick to where she's started wrapping his arm, and then his brows pinch, head cocking to one side when he takes notice of her arms. “Those are... interesting.”

“What are?” She pauses long enough to glance down to where his gaze has gone, and laughs. “Ah. Yeah, I guess you didn't know I had these, did you?” Her hand lifts away from his wrist to hover in the space between them, her own collection of tattoos a mass of bright colors that cover both her arms from wrist to where her shirt sleeves end. “If you can't tell, I have a bit of a thing for monster movies.”

“Clearly,” he says, not unkindly, his focus trained on the picture of The Wolfman sitting just below her elbow, half of his face cut off by the red plaid of her shirt.

Marian smiles, turning her hand palm-up to show the underside of her arm, letting go of him long enough to point at a ghoulish-looking girl's face. “This one here was always my favorite, and _yes_ I get the irony, but I've always had a soft spot for George Romero. Especially his earlier stuff. Real ground breaker, no one had ever done anything like he did before he started making his movies.”

“Uh... who?”

“Oh come _on!_ ” she says incredulously, her eyes widening. “You can't tell me you've never heard of Romero! Night of the Living Dead? _Dawn_ of the Dead? Director of almost every zombie flick ever made that's worth seeing? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“I, uh,” Fen says, his lip twitching as he tries and fails not to smirk. “No, I can't say I have.”

“This is just insulting.” She turns back to the gauze hanging off of his arm with a frown, her head still shaking once she's finished and pinned it in place with a finger. “I don't know where you've been for the last forty-seven years—”

“Not alive yet, for a large portion of it.”

“—but if by some miracle we ever come across a working TV and have the spare juice in the generator to run it, we're putting an end to this blasphemy ASAP.”

He gives another one of his short little chuckles, the sound rumbling out of his chest. “I'll look forward to it, then.”

“Good. Glad to hear I won't have to worry about hog tying you to a chair like I had to with Bethany. Oh don't worry,” she says hurriedly at the thrown look he gives her while she dives back into the first aid kit, “she thanked me eventually.” Her mouth tilts, head turning to look into the box of supplies, and she curses. _“_ Oh for the love of - _damn it_ _,_ Carver.”

“What is it?”

“Stupid git used up the last of the bandage wrap on that nick he got from his ax and didn't refill the kit like he damn well _knows_ he's supposed to,” Marian grumbled, then sighed, mouth pursing as she flicks her eyes through the rest of the room. “You didn't happen to grab any when we were stocking up, did you?”

“No. But I did see them.”

“Where?”

“Currently? Pressed against the door and buried behind three sets of shelves.”

“... Well that isn't very helpful at the moment, is it?” She gives a frustrated huff, blowing her bangs out of her eyes while she lifts her free hand to the nape of her neck. “Guess we get to improvise, then.”

“What are you—” Fen starts to ask, then stops when her fingers finish fumbling with the knot holding her bandana in place, the red fabric slipping free in her grip. “Hawke, that isn't necessary.”

“It is if you want this gauze to stay where it ought to,” she says as she starts to fold the cloth in her lap with one hand, the other tightening its grip around his arm ever so slightly when he tries to pull away. “I don't know about you, but my gut has never been wrong and it's screaming 'leave those shelves the fuck alone if you don't want to die a horrible, painful death' and I'm not inclined to test it for something petty as a more orthodox bandage.”

The tug against her fingers stops and his arm relaxes, followed by a long, surrendering sigh through his nose. “I suppose you make a valid point.”

“Excellent. Good to see you're not opposed to common sense.” The bandana is wrapped around his arm in a flash, tied off in a neat little knot just below the base of his wrist before he has a chance to change his mind. “And would you look at that?” Marian says, eyes lifting from the makeshift bandage up to his face while her hands fall to either of her hips. “It doesn't look half bad on you either if I do say so myself. Red really is your color, you should think about wearing it more often.”

He looks up from scrutinizing his new accessory, one corner of his mouth curling. “I'll take it under advisement,” he says, and then, gaze turning serious: “Thank you, Hawke. I... appreciate the gesture.”

She returns the smile but shrugs off the thanks, busying herself with closing up the kit and shoving it back into the bottom of her pack. “Don't mention it. If a friend can't help you patch up an arm while you're hiding out from a horde of walkers what good are they, right?”

“Friend.” His nose wrinkles, brows pulled tight like the word is in some foreign language he's still learning the basics of and isn't quite sure of its translation in English. The effect is, she thinks in amusement as she continues putting away her supplies, ridiculously adorable. “Yes, I... suppose you have a point.”

“Besides, I owed you one,” she says, tossing him a grin while she zips up the flap of her bag and moves it out of the way of her feet. “You're the one who dragged my ass away from the window, remember?”

“Only after you took care of that walker in the street. It would have killed me if you hadn't shot it.”

“What was I going to do, sit there and let it bite your nose off?” Her shoulders fall against more boxes as she leans back. “Would have been a waste of a perfectly handsome face if you ask me.”

Fen laughs at that, but it's awkward, halting, and he scrambles to cover it up with a painfully fake cough. He even tries to sell it by turning away and lifting a balled hand in front of his mouth, and she's just barely able to catch a snort in her throat when she notices that he's blushing again, his ears turned a deep shade of cherry red. So he _is_ the shy type. Looks like Bethany was right after all.

“So, any preference for conversation topics?” she asks casually, offering him an easy out but still tucking the tidbit of information away for potential later use. “We probably still have a little while to go before Aveline and the others can launch their daring rescue mission.”

“If we're lucky,” he says, embarrassment slipping away and turning suddenly serious. Marian is relieved, however, to see he seems about as keen to dwell on their predicament as she is, one corner of his mouth pulling down in thought as his eyes flick back to the tattoos on her arms. “Care to talk about those?”

Her eyes go wide as her grin spreads farther across her face, stretching from one ear to the other. “An excellent topic of choice if I do say so myself. What do you want to know?”

“The obvious, I would think.”

“Why cover myself in B-rated movie monsters, right?” she asks, and when he nods she shrugs. “Call me a terrible film buff, but I always liked those sorts of movies – the campier the better. Not sure why, exactly. Maybe I just like watching a guy in a polystyrene mask and eight pounds of makeup chase people through cardboard cutout sets.”

Fen smirks, his posture relaxing enough for him to lean back into the boxes as well. “Call me presumptuous, but that doesn't sound like a good enough reason for you to have them permanently drawn onto your arms.”

“What, a girl can't deck herself out in Bela Lugosi on a whim?” she asks, jaw dropping dramatically in fake insult that makes him roll his eyes. “But no, you're right. I guess I... I don't know, I really appreciate how they came up with this stuff, I guess? Like, the process and effort that goes into creating all these mutants and ghouls and other things that go bump in the night has always been really interesting to me. How sometimes it goes really well and you get your Draculas and Freddy Kruegers that scare the pants off of you and keep you up at night, annnnd then sometimes it doesn't, and you just end up laughing your ass off at giant killer tomatoes from space.”

“Giant killer tomatoes?”

“I know. Trust me, you're not missing much with that one.”

“It sounds like they were quite the hobby for you.”

“Damn right they were,” she says sincerely, her focus dropping to her hands in her lap, fingers picking at a crack in her thumbnail. “Was trying to make them more than that too. You know, before the whole world decided to launch itself off the deep end and landed on its head.”

“What do you mean?” Fen asks curiously, and she hears him shift his weight on his box.

She gives a small laugh and looks up, only to realize he's angled himself towards her, watching with a focus she's surprised to see looks like genuine interest. Her brow cocks as she leans forward to rest her elbows against her knees while she says: “You know, normally when I talk to people about this they lose interest after we get to the killer tomatoes part. You sure you want to keep listening to me ramble?”

It's his turn to shrug, his head tilting while his shoulder lifts and falls. “I'm enjoying it well enough.”

“All right then,” she says incredulously. “I warned you though. Not my fault if you end up bored to tears, and if you start calling me a dork for this I'm taking back that drink I owe you.”

His mouth twitches, eyes crinkling at the corners with the grin. “Wouldn't dream of it.”

“I like to draw,” she says simply, “or at least I did. I'm sure I still would if all my sketchbooks weren't already full to bursting and I could get my hands on some new ones. When things were still, well, _normal,_ I was trying to get myself a job as a concept artist. You know, for like a production company or video game developer? Pretty much any free time I had went into working on different character designs. Monsters mostly, obviously, but I did some other things too. Aliens, different takes on types of elves – pretty much anything related to all that fantasy, sci-fi, horror crap.”

“ _Elves_?”

“Eh, what can I say? I have a thing for people with pointy ears.” Her teeth are at her piercing again, giving it a quick tug. “But yeah. Anyway. I had my portfolio out at a few companies – even had an interview all set to go with one place that seemed really interested in my stuff... And then everything went to shit,” she says with a sigh, and while it may not be intentional she catches herself slipping a bit of residual bitterness into her words.

Fen, observant bastard that he apparently is, catches on to it easily, and his voice is softer when he says: “I'm... sorry to hear that. I imagine it was quite the disappointment.”

“I mean yeah, of course it was.” Marian quickly forces the frown that had crept across her face without her notice into something less melancholy while she leans back against the boxes again. “But it isn't like I have any real room to complain. I'm still _alive_ , for one. And so are Bethy, Carver and Mom. Christ, even my _dog_ has made it through so far. There are a lot of people out there who lost a hell of a lot more than a job opportunity, and that's putting it mildly.”

He makes a low humming noise in his throat and copies her, his head thudding quietly against the box behind him as he tilts it back. “Perspective is always a beneficial quality to have.”

“Right? At least we haven't been turned into mindless, cannibalistic nightlights. Not yet, anyway,” she says, and then quickly, to distract herself from the flicker of dread that shoots through her stomach at the thought: “So what about you, huh?”

“Me?” Fen asks, sounding puzzled while his forehead wrinkles.

“No, the other tattooed guy with anime hair in here with us.” Marian rolls her eyes, gesturing towards him with her chin. “Of course I meant you. Come on, there's got to be a good story behind all of those.”

“I...” He looks down to stare critically at his arms, the crease in his forehead deepening as he flexes his fingers, tendons and muscles moving beneath his skin and making the inked lines shift. “I don't remember.”

“What do you mean you don't remember?” Her brows furrow, then relax when her eyes widen at a thought. “Oh God... _Please_ tell me you didn't get drunk off your ass and decide covering yourself in white squiggly lines would be 'so cool'.”

“What? No, I—”

“Because that would be both ridiculously stupid of you and the biggest let down of a story I've ever heard.”

“ _No,_ Hawke,” he says shortly, and as exasperated as he may sound his expression has turned more thoughtful than annoyed. “I... honestly don't remember why I have them. ... Or much of anything else, for that matter.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Wait, what?” Marian does a double take, blinking while she pulls herself forward and turns to better face Fen. “What the hell do you mean 'or much of anything else'?”

“Exactly how it sounds. The oldest memory I have is from a few days before I came across your group.” His mouth twists in on itself, and she doesn't miss the glance he throws her way before his head falls further forward, eyes locking onto his arms again. “I'm sorry. I should have mentioned this sooner.”

“I mean, I won't lie, it would have been nice to know,” Marian says while she reaches to rub at the back of her head, still reeling at this latest turn of events. “At least so that Anders could take a look at you and make sure you were ok.”

“ _No_ ,” Fen says quickly, back snapping rigid and the word coming out sharp and harsh enough to make her jump. “No, I...” Sheepish now, embarrassed, and she can all but hear him scolding himself while he lifts the cleaner of his hands and drags it roughly through his hair. “What I meant to say is that I'm fine. Healthy. There's no need to involve the doctor.”

“Call me crazy,” she says tersely – as petty as it may be of her, that outburst of his stung, “but not being able to remember anything past last month doesn't exactly come off as being the picture of health to me.”

“Perhaps not. But do you honestly think there's anything that he or anyone else could do about it given the circumstances?”

“Short of hitting you upside the head with a brick and hoping it knocks something loose? I guess not.”

“Agreed,” he says with a quirk of his lip, the line of his shoulders easing when he turns his head towards her. “I appreciate the concern, Hawke. But I'm fine.”

She isn't sure what, but there's something – _off_ about how he says it that makes Marian think he isn't as 'fine' as he insists. His eyes don't quite meet hers, staring off over her shoulder at the wall behind her rather than meeting her own, while his voice gives the tiniest hint of a waver when he speaks. She supposes she shouldn't jump to conclusions – it could be any number of things besides dishonesty, exhaustion being the most likely, and she can hardly blame him for it after the day they've both had. Or maybe his arm is hurting him more than he's letting on? In any case, she doesn't push the subject further. If whatever it is that's making him look so out of sorts were important and not just private, she trusts him enough by now to tell her. As for her morbid curiosity... well, she'll just have to learn to cope with it as always. It's better than inadvertently pissing him off and making their situation less pleasant than it already is.

“So what do you remember?” she asks instead, hoping the change in topic will cut the awkward silence that's started to grow between them short. “If you don't mind my asking or anything.”

Fen's head twitches, his eyes clearing and flicking back to her face. “Before I met up with you and the others?” She answers with a nod, watching intently while his lips part and eyes narrow – more out of what she's glad to see looks like thought rather than annoyance. “Waking up. In some ridiculously clean room – white walls, white tile, hell, white everything – with no windows except for one in this massive metal door. I was in one of those stretcher beds, the kind with the wheels on the bottom.” His brows are bunching again, head turned away to stare off into the room. “And... machines. Monitors? Enough of them to cover one of the walls. None of them were running, but I was... _hooked up_ to a few of them, and there was some kind of an IV in my arm. It wasn't pleasant to take out.”

“Hospital. It would explain the gown, anyway, and why you can't remember anything. You were probably there for whatever turned you into an amnesiac.”

“... Probably.”

Marian smirks, nudging her shoulder into his and says, teasingly: “I bet it was because you were being an idiot. Got yourself into a car accident on your motorcycle or something else equally stupid. You look like the kind of guy who'd think he was too cool to bother wearing a helmet.”

He breathes a short snort of a laugh, the corners of his mouth twitching while his eyes cut back to her. “I appreciate your faith in my intelligence, Hawke.”

“Just calling things like I see them. So what happened next?”

“I shouted for a while. I thought there might be someone, a doctor, a nurse nearby. But when no one came, I left,” he says easily, as though the answer should be obvious. “The door was unlocked. It opened up into some sort of a medical lab – more monitors, charts, filing cabinets, someone's desk. What was left of them, anyway. The place had been torn apart, and there was blood. A lot of blood, and... _other_ things.”

“Talk about waking up in the middle of nightmare.”

“It was an unsettling experience, yes,” Fen's nose flares, his grin lost when his mouth twists into a crooked line. “I didn't hang around long. There was another door that led out into a hallway. More rooms like my own, all of them empty, some clean, some, well, _not_ . I shouted more, asked if anyone could hear me. _That_ was a mistake.”

Marian doesn't have to ask. “Walkers.”

“Yes.”

Something hard clenches in her stomach, hands balling against her thighs tight enough to dig little crescent indents into the meat of her palm. Her imagination does her the less-than-courtesy of filling in the blanks of the story: Fen, bleary-eyed and disoriented shuffling down a hallway in the dark. No idea of where he is, _who_ he is, thrown headfirst into what must have looked like a real life version of one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. And then to stumble on _that_ before he could so much as set his bearings... Christ, if she'd been the one in his place she probably would have had about enough time to piss herself before they tore her apart. Her own first run-in with a walker had been far from fun, but at least she'd had the benefit of all the news reports and emergency broadcasts, even if they had been infuriatingly vague.

“I found them in what I think was the lobby. Four of them,” he says quietly, bangs falling into his eyes when he tilts his head forward to stare at his hands. “At least, I believe that's how many there were. I didn't bother doing a head count at the time. I thought they were like me at first. Other patients. Dressed in the same gowns as I was in any case. They were huddled together in the middle of the floor. I asked them who they were, what was going on – and that's when I saw the body.”

“ _Shit_ , Fen,” she says, voice unintentionally breathy.

“A security guard. He still had his taser in his hand. They were... _eating_ him. And then they heard me, looked up, and started to fucking _glow._ ” His eyes close and he shakes his head, a long, shaky breath leaving through his nose. Her fingers twitch – she wants to reach out to him, put a hand on his arm, pat his shoulder, something. But by the time she starts to lift her hand away from her leg he's speaking again. “They came after me. I ran. Managed to find a broken window that went outside and threw myself through it. Didn't even bother to see how far off the ground I was. I got lucky. Ended up falling a good twelve feet but I landed in some bushes at the bottom. Then I just – kept running. Into the damned woods of all things.”

“And then you found us out in the middle of nowhere a couple days later,” Marian says with a nod. “Or did something else equally terrible happen in between?”

His head gives a quick jerk, his chin tilting down and to the side in the same direction as his eyes. “No,” he says quickly, the hand with her bandanna attached lifting to cup at the back of his neck. “That's— that's everything.”

“You sure?” she asks, leaning forward to try to catch his notice. This time she _knows_ he's keeping something from her; between how tense he's gone and the way he's looking at anything but her, he may as well have hung a flashing neon sign around his neck that says 'I'M LYING'. “I get the feeling there's something else bo—”

Something pounds into the stockroom door. _Hard_. Marian jumps near out of her skin, her question cut short by a sharp intake of breath. Fen is on his feet and across the room by his bag a second later, the nine millimeter back in his hand when the same something hits the door again, this time hard enough to make the shelves piled against it screech against the tiles.

“Fuck _._ ” She's on her feet now too, tripping over them while she scrambles to join him and take hold of the abandoned shotgun. She stuffs her hand into her pocket, pulls out a handful of the pistol's bullets and shoves them into his palm, her pulse already kicked into high gear all over again. “ _FUCK_.”

“Time your shots,” Fen says, sounding calmer than he has any right to in her most humble of opinions, the clip slid free, loaded and clicked back into place before she has time to blink. “There are four more shells in the front pocket of my bag if we need them. If they break through we'll have enough to hold them back until—”

“Marian!” The something – some _one_ Marian realizes, and her heart gives a stuttered lurch in her chest – hits the door a third and then a fourth time. “Fenris! Are you in there?”

“ _Aveline!_ ” What's left of the bullets in her hand scatter when they hit the floor, the gun tossed a bit more carelessly than is wise towards Fen's bag while she runs the six feet between her and the door.

“Oh thank _God,_ ” Aveline says, her voice distorted through the wood and piles of meds, though she doesn't miss the heavy sigh of relief that follows. “I found the radio out front with all the blood and I thought – never mind. Is Fenris there with you? Are you both alright?”

“I'm here,” Fen says, answering for himself as he stuffs the pistol into the waistband of his jeans. “We're both fine. Relatively speaking.”

“Good, ok. Good.” She gives another push against the door. “Now hurry up and unblock this damned thing. Isabela's distracting them as best she can but it won't last forever. There are still a few of them dawdling out on the street.”

Fen is ten steps ahead of Aveline, his shoulder already braced and shoving against the closest set of shelves by the time she's finished speaking.

“Just a second!”

The rest goes by in a rush. Marian is at the other end a split second later, hands wrapped around the supports and pulling back against her heels. Between the both of them and her latest spike of adrenaline they have the four of them out of their way in record time, the last thrown helter-skelter into the others and toppling to the floor in a wave of even more displaced bottles and packages. Her head is still reeling when she makes it back to snatch up her backpack, the only coherent thought she's able to make any sense out of a constant, repeating string of _thank FUCKING God!_

Aveline all but tears the door off of its hinges and nearly takes Fen's arm with it, his hand snatched away from where he was about to open it himself a second before it slams into the opposite wall. She looks, when Marian turns and finds her looming in the doorway, like a woman possessed. Ginger hair frizzled and freckles standing out on a paler than average face, she can't help but think that if they were in any less of a hurry that she'd be halfway through some comment about her looking the perfect picture of a worried mother hen.

Instead she gives a wide-mouthed smile. “You have _no_ idea how good it is to see you.”

“Likewise,” Aveline says, nodding first to her and then Fen. “Your mother's been a nervous wreck since you missed your check in – I'm pretty sure she'd have had my head if we came back without you.”

“Well luckily it looks like we won't have to find out just yet, will we?”

Aveline snorts. “Luckily. Come on, I don't know about you two, but I want to get the hell out of here.”

“Definitely,” Fen says as he slings his duffle bag up onto his shoulder with his good arm.

They make it out through the front of the store easily enough, the room empty with the exception of the dead walkers from their earlier escape attempt. The street outside is clear for the most part as well, a few walkers scattered here and there but nowhere near close enough to have Marian worried just yet. It's quiet too, the only noise she can hear besides their feet against the pavement as they hurry down the road the sound of a car running a few streets down and—

“Jesus Christ!” She can't help it. She laughs. Long and loud and hard enough to make her lurch to a stop and curl over her knees. By the time she's finished there's tears in her eyes, her stomach hurts and Fen is looking at her like she's completely lost her marbles. Not that she gives a single shit about that at the moment, because damn it if this isn't _exactly_ how she'd have guessed Isabela would have decided to draw the walkers off. “Is she – is she fucking blasting 'Push It' on her stereo?”

Aveline is laughing too now, covering her mouth with the back of her hand while the color starts to make its way back into her face. “She thought you'd appreciate that.”

“Oh _fuck_. Remind me to kiss that girl when I see her next.”

“If, er, you two are finished?” Fen says with a cocked brow, though Marian is happy to see he's smiling now too. _Ecstatic_ , actually, and while she doesn't expect the excited little thrill that shoots through her at the sight of it, she doesn't bother questioning it.

“Ready whenever you are,” she says when she straightens, fixing her grip of the shotgun as she moves to walk beside him. “What do you say, Fen? Can you stand my company for the walk home too?”

His grin grows, the green of his eyes bright while they make their way down the street. “I've enjoyed following you so far, Hawke.”

 


End file.
